


Feather of a Dove

by Atqueinstupracaballum



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: All Around Poor Mental Health, Anti-social Sniper, Australia, Based more in the comics, Because the comics need more love, Flashbacks, I am but a simple Southern Belle, M/M, Murder, Setting is vague because I don't know much about the bush, Sniper gets to do some sniping!, Survivor Guilt, Violent Thoughts, Vomiting, i guess?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:29:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29938986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atqueinstupracaballum/pseuds/Atqueinstupracaballum
Summary: Their enemies have been eradicated, the Administrator is gone, and the team has been disbanded for good. Mundy is home, yet home is not what it once was and there are things he can only barely comprehend in the corner of his eye.~Tags will update as this goes along~~This will NOT be a OwO Cute fluffy :3 Bush <3 Medicine fic~
Relationships: Medic/Sniper (Team Fortress 2)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As promised I dug into the idea that inspired You're My Crowning Achievement and made it bigger and even worse than before... 
> 
> Sniper can't snipe his way outta this one I'm afraid

Sniper had missed home.

He had missed his camper, the bush; missed waking up to the sun bathing him in its early morning rays without death looming over the future, obscuring that sun. He had missed crawling out of bed and making himself a god-awful cup of coffee, then taking that warm cup outside to watch what remained of the sunrise. 

Sure, he had woken early in the base, during the war, and enjoyed the sunrise then. That much was true. Yet New Mexico hardly held a match to Australia, to the bush, to _home_. 

All his life he had struggled with finding where he had come from, his 'real' flesh and blood, 'real' family, 'real' country. So many years of that limbo had led to such a rotten end -to say the least-. All that angst and hope boiled down to those cursed happenings of New Zealand. His blood was Kiwi blood, that much was true, but blood meant very little to him now. New Zealand was a hunk of dog shit for all he cared, this, _Australia_ , was where he would park his camper, now that the war was over. He would live up to his nickname and become one once more with the old bush. 

Everything was tranquil, birds chirping above head, the distant caw of crows and ravens, the occasional screech of insects from the tall grasses surrounding the rotting steps he perched on. He sat there, brain a pleasant mush sloshing about the confines of his lazy skull, perked awake bit by bit by the old coffee. 

It had been years since he had felt like this.

_Human._

_Alive._

_...Happy?_

That may have been a stretch. He was content, at the very least. A sort of stillness had come over him, each cell in his form was sedated. The world was at peace.

**It's too good to last.**

He ignored the pesky voice, silencing it with another swig of coffee. It was the nerves talking. Nerves built up from years of 'warfare'. Years of meaningless, horrific butchery. Years of being murdered in every conceivable manner, yet always being revived right back into the bloodshed, a brutal circle fit to tie even the most stoic of minds. Years of complete insanity.

At first, it had been exhilarating, doing what he was best at without the pressure of death and law enforcement. Sure, he had worked amongst absolute quacks and psychopaths, but they left him alone well enough. It was, all things considered, an easy job. soon, however, that original exhilaration wore off, the initial inertia fading as newness chipped away to bleak indifference, to weariness. A numbness towards his own actions had permeated much of the war. though there were small bursts of feral excitement to his accomplishments on the battlefield, sooner or later he began, nonetheless, to feel more like a goat being continuously fed to the slaughter than a mercenary. 

Not to mention his teammates...there were no real words to properly describe those men.

Mundy could not say that he missed it, not right now, not when everything was so damn peaceful in the present...

He sat on the old porch, taking deep breaths to coat his lungs with fresh morning air, stretching the vertebrae of his back out not unlike a large cat. For a moment more he so and simply stares ow to the bush that spread aw around him, kissing the horizon. Eventually, he came back down to earth, looking down to the porch he sat on. With him , right by his leg was a file. _The_ file. His grey eyes picked at it, not overly enthused.

Employers. Potentially.

Miss Pauline had been kind to all of them, giving them hints and suggestions and names to contact if necessary, nudging them onwards to be some other mercenary boss's problem. He appreciated it then, thanked her for it, and appreciated it even more fully now.

The thought of having to go on and retire tempted him at first, for a little moment, before becoming pale and flabby. He was an easy-going fellow, simple, but he wasn't one to sit on his ass and do nothing or spend his twilight years playing golf and babysitting grandchildren. Sniping was a good job if ever there was one. it was his love. Killing folk was profitable and he was mighty good at it now.

So he looked over the employers she had suggested for him, men and women who specialized in catering to those of the populace that wanted to take the population down a notch for whatever reason. Some were more refined than others, some shadier, some looking less like a proper hitman business and more like a family business. Over each entry in the folder, he scanned carefully, taking his time thumbing through each page. All options were weighed equally before he picked out a few that stuck out to him. 

Now came the more difficult bit.

The next step called for a trip into town, where there was a phone booth somewhere for him to hog, a necessary step in sorting his life out. Town was a happening place, as far as the bush went, there were more than 4 families every mile or so, at the very least, and the roads were properly paved.

Sniper remembered in his boyhood when the houses and shops were thinner, when there were about 10 families in total, most of whom were cousins. It had transmuted while he was gone, the families had committed mitosis, as well as a few others moving in. Now town was busy, it had traffic, it had economy, it had... _people_.

Sniper did not like _people_ , nor business, nor traffic...he sighed, closing the envelope and throwing it beside him, looking out over his land, his parent's land rather. Mum always thought he would come out of his shell eventually, would start getting good at talking and chatting and making friends. Forty years and counting and that change had yet to occur, he was still very much happily in his shell, and was now ready to defend it to the death.

Still, the trip had to be done, and so he hopped up and readied himself to enter into the world. Not much had to be done in the hygiene or aesthetics department, due to the fact that he did not give a rat's ass. A fresh-ish shirt was slipped on, as were socks, shoes, and a belt.

It felt odd not wearing the red of his uniform, or having the insignia on his sleeve. Wrong, even, but he pushed through the feeling, took up his hat, and began packing as many smaller weapons as he could onto his wiry person.

That done, he was ready. Keys in hand, he got into his van, fiddling with the ignition until his beautiful creation came to life, albeit with a few false starts, and a good few cussing outs. Dust kicked up in major plooms as he started down the barely cut-out roads, sticking to the sides of the odd car and swirling through the air. Every rock or gravel bit jolted the car, making for a less than comfortable ride for his innards, but he kept on with it until the dirt smoothed out, then became smooth(ish) asphalt. Despite his deliverance into better driving conditions his hindquarters were still tingling as he entered on to the main road through the town.

It wasn't hard to find a telephone out and about. More hard though to wait and watch a man half as young as he try to reason with some angry shila over the line for what felt like up and over half an hour. Some part of him pitied the lad, for he was getting a whipping for whatever transgression he was attempting to repent, but the other, larger part of him thought dreamily about the kukri -a smaller one, tucked into his jeans pockets, unlike the one he had carried in the battlefield- just a few little centimeters from where his finger pads were brushing. 

It was have been no issue at all, grasping the faithful little knife, pulling it out, and flaying the perpetrator, all while the line was still connected. Surely, being that angry, the shila would not mind hearing her boy's final, agonized screams, and the last gurgled, blood-slicked breath as his flesh was turned inside out like a skinned rabbit. Around them there were no real witnesses, Mundy could disappear before anybody got there. 

It would be so easy...

He snapped out of his bloodthirsty fantasy to the sound of the boy hanging up the phone in defeat. 

Eventually, he was able to make the necessary phone call inquiring about the first sniping job on his list. Meetings were set up in towns that were not his own for interviews and he was told that he could either bring a resume or a body as proof of skill. He chose the latter and closed out the call on good enough terms, feeling fairly optimistic about his future.

A soft coo followed as he hung the phone up, joined by others until he was being serenaded by birds as he hopped back into his car. _Odd_ , he thought, it was rare to see doves out in the bush.

In his mind, he had to make the bother of getting to town worth it, and so began on some of the errands he had planned for himself.

The grocery store was an experience, to say the least. He'd not been into one properly for...years. It was louder than he remembered, more mothers fussing over the week's meals, more kids trying to sneak sweets into the cart, more teenagers snagging up all the proper chips. But he survived, grabbing all of his things and paying at the register, trying his best to avoid more social interaction than was strictly necessary.

He stored his victory prizes in the shitty fridge of his camper, or on top of it, without much faith that any of it would actually ever keep all that cool. It occurred to him then that he ought to go hunting, get some real meat for himself. The thought was appealing, to say the least, and tugged him along that old main road again, luring him back to the seclusion of the bush where there was plenty of fresh game waiting to be killed and consumed. 

The thought of the hunt, of dominating his land with tooth and nail, crawling around some muck, scrounging for life forms that would not annoyingly respawn if he bested them thrilled him enough to burn real rubber home. 


	2. Chapter 2

It had an element of therapy to it, skinning something. it was all monotonous actions, second nature after years of butchering his own meals. Every bit of the deer would get used somehow, someway, someday. His mum and pa had taught him all the ways not to waste anything. It was a form of respect, his father would tell him. Respect to the animal they had snuffed out, an atonement for ripping it off the mortal coil. 

On such memories, his mind lingered as he went about the butchering process, cutting fat from muscle, stripping meat from bone, organizing it all in a way that would be most efficient. This, dealing with carcasses, proved to be one of the few sectors in his life in which he could be seen organizing anything. It was a blur of measured movements, the calm clicking of an oiled machine, leaving his mind to wander along dusty paths. It started innocently enough, simple little memories that could not have hurt a fly. Memories of hunting, of the meals spent with his parents, of being raised by those two lovely people, of sitting in trees above his bullies and pelting them with stones and root beer bottles, of long nights spent out in the bush with nothing but the stars as his company. Good things...Good things which became grey and putrid, imbittered with death. His hands still moved, working, yet he saw none of it and felt only the incessant pounding of his pulse behind his eyes. That pulse seemed to travel downwards, through his arteries, settling at last in his belly, pushing blood out of the wounds in his flesh. He felt his life spilling out of him into cold waters from multiple bullet holes, saw his bastard of a teammate smiling like the Devil himself as he bled to death. 

Poison circulated through his system, each breath welcomed more in as hooks tore through the soft flesh of his stomach, claws of something he dare not name dragging along his unhappy flesh. Nausea fell into place behind it, overwhelming him for a moment, spiking as he remembered medic, with that same awful smile, leering above him and declaring that he had defied modern medicine. 

The clatter of his butcher knife hitting the floor ripped him back into the blurry, wilted edges of reality. 

Dinner was cooked up, aided by the numerous old, battered cookbooks his mum had left in her wake. It resulted in something that could have been homey, had it been cooked by someone with actual skill. For the better, he surmised as he ate it out on the porch, the house behind him was already giving him enough nostalgia for his tastes.

He spent that supper watching the sun descend on the earth, coating the world in bouts of pinks, purples, oranges, and a few scarlets. Birds kicked up, crows and vultures trying to get the last word in, others merely making their beds, chattering with their little bird families. Slowly the nightlife awoke, crickets screaming in the tall grass, amongst other pleasant neighbors. Bigger things lurked out in the brush and trees, he knew, he had seen them for himself and fought them. 

It was there, on the porch, feeling the heat leave the air and the soil, replaced with a tickling wind and something that was almost tolerable, that he began to feel it again. It was always there, he knew, perched at the very edges of his mind, ready to pounce if he grew still for too long. Like a parasite, it had attached itself to the smooth muscles deep within him, suckling from what nutrients it could gain. It had not been there before. It was new. It was a product...

There was a gap, an aching void nibbling somewhere in his conscious, an eerier unwanted feeling of having lost something...of something not fitting quite right. Something was wrong. _He_ was wrong. 

He looked down at himself as though the wound was physical, something that he could patch up with bandages and beer. Alas, physically all was well. His body, though scuffed, scarred, and stitched, was all present. There were no intrusions, no bullets, no knives. Nothing. 

That only meant he did not have to waste the bandages, however. Beer still had a fair shot of fixing it right up, taken in the right quantity.

So, he took his dishes and put them in the sink, noting unhappily how the feeling shifted as he trailed the halls of his childhood. With a bit too much pep in his step, he hurried to his camper, throwing the door open and pillaging it for all the beers he had stockpiled. It wasn't good stuff, but it got the job done.

On the counter he used to prepare food there sat a clunky radio, which he flipped on to a station that played decent enough music regularly. Around each word of the blaring song, there was a soft layering of static, occasionally it overwhelmed what the singer was attempting to say. Static or no, it was loud enough to drown out his own thoughts, whisk them far away to the cracked, battered shelves of his mind and push them to the shadowiest realms to be forgotten. Humming to a tune he did not know, he took his collection of beers up to his bed, climbing up and flopping down on the old, hardly washed sheets, making a sort of nest out of the bottles, throwing in a pack of cigarettes for good luck. This had not been the first time he had done this, and it by god would not be the last.

Morning came, the cock crowed, and Mundy found himself meeting the rising sun with vomit. He wretched into a shrub, his body in an utter mutiny over his previous life choices, which included seven shitty beers and half a pack of cigarettes. Bile burned in his throat, mouth vile cotton as he choked up half of his digestive tract, hating the very aspect of being alive and sentient. 

Afterward, as he sat catching his breath and wiping his mouth clean, he felt nothing but shame and disgust. In his youth, he could chug a whole twelve pack like it was water and go about his day with little more than a headache to punish him -besides a smacking from his mum-. Now here he was, nearly in a fetal position from half that.

 _The magic of getting old_...he thought bitterly to himself, rising from the ground and dusting the dirt from his pants. 

Tomorrow was a rather important day, the interview with his hopefully soon-to-be new boss. There were many things in the stretch of hours between now and then that had to be sorted out and sitting next to his own expelled innards was accomplishing nothing. For one, he had some folk to kill, secondly, he had to get to the town itself. On a checklist, it appeared only to be two little items, not chores at all, but Mundy knew better. 

One of those things was significantly easier than the other, still, he felt easygoing confidence preside over him. Compared to his last job, this one would be a piece of god damn cake.

It was only as he was traveling into the big city where the meeting would be conducted that Mundy began to regret a good number of his life choices. The drive had been on the longer side. From his estimations, it should have taken 3 or so hours, ideally...His ass was beginning to go numb as the traffic thickened, and thickened, finally crawling to a near halt. This was going to take much, much longer than 3 hours. 

Horns honked, people grouched, bumpers kissed bumpers, and Mundy wanted nothing more than to crawl back to the seclusion of his bush. Better yet, get out of his car, go into one of the higher buildings here and thin the traffic out by hand. The muscles of his back were unbearably tense, skin crawling with so many people being so damned impatient, and every second brought him closer to snapping. 

To distract himself, to cool his boiling blood, he began to think of the things he would do if he got the chance, of all the blood he yearned to shed. He thought of horrific car accidents, of how to drive that would kill as many people as possible in one swoop. The violence washed over him, cleansed him, and renewed his spirits enough to drive on. 

He felt akin to a cow amongst a thick drove of cattle being driven onwards to some new pen, or else like the world's slowest stampede.

Finally, however, he clawed his way through the cities, into suburbs, where there were fewer people with a higher concentration of snobbery. Had he not just sat through an hour and a half of the civilized world's preparation for Hell, the glares and disgruntled looks towards his beat-up beauty of a vehicle would have been amusing. Now, because of his wound-up nerves, it was merely another item on his ever-growing list of why he stayed in the bush. Nonetheless, he kept moving, leaving them in their rich, refined dust. 

Soon he found himself a quaint park, with plenty of children scuttling about and wine moms power walking off their shame.

He parked away from the main packs, staying in the shadows as he took up his tools, hiding them away in the large duffle bag he had brought. 

Into the thick woods of the park, he went, hiding from view with trees and shrubs, trekking farther and farther from the central playgrounds and clearings. There were still groups of people walking along the trails, daring to go out far enough that no one would hear if something were to happen.

It was in this most secluded of areas within the bowels of the foresty park that he set up his shop, crawling up into a tree and waiting for prey to come to him.

It was a group of teens, four of them, ranging in ages but not in smarts. They trundled along, heckling and shoving another, making stupid jokes and shit talking peers of theirs with that distinct dumbassery that only teens can manifest. He listened from afar in his nest, watching through his scope. Shallow, brainless chatter could be heard loud and clear all the way from where he was sitting and it was decided then that the world would not be losing out on much, should these shitheads never be found again.

He readied himself, taking proper aim, every cell in his being calming to nothing. There was no world beyond this, nothing in the universe but him and his prey. All was still for a precious moment before a distinct BANG cut through the air. 

_one!_

_two!_

_t_ _hree!_

_Four!_

From the millisecond that last bullet left the barrel of his gun he was barreling down from the tree, collecting his bodies in the bag he'd brought, and stealing away in the shadows to the solace of his camper. He chucked the corpse bag onto the floor, all in a flash, all before he could blink, and soon he was on the road once again.

A success, all things considered, and he felt confident in his abilities, pride warming his chest as he drove away from the scene of the crime. 

"Hope ya lot don't mind some music," he called out to the corpses in the camper, flipping on the radio and humming along to some awful pop song as he drove.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm playing around with shorter chapter lengths for this fic, so feel free to pipe up on if you like the length or not.


End file.
